Flesh and Blood by Michael Lister

he was enjoying himself. He had waited patiently for Stone to say something so he could deliver his blow. I understood his frustration, had tried to help by keeping him in the loop of the investigations I was involved in, but the way he was acting now was childish and petty.
     
    Without saying another word, Stone turned and headed toward the car.
     
    “Sorry, John,” Dad said.
     
    “No you’re not,” I said.
     
    “Not for that arrogant bastard, no,” he said, “but for you. I’d like to have you in on this one. Maybe we—”
     
    “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll be busy trying to help the warden keep his job.”
     
    He shook his head, lowered his voice, and leaned in so that his mouth was at my ear. “Don’t let your white guilt get the best of you, boy.”
     
    Possessing a racial sensitivity my Dad did not share, often put us at odds, my identification with the small minority of African-Americans in our community more than my own race, though never overtly expressed, was viewed as a betrayal.
     
    Where had my appreciation of and concern for the disenfranchised come from? Why did I feel so much more at home in prison than behind the pulpit of an all-white, middle-class congregation? I didn’t know, exactly. I knew it had to do with Jesus, his fringe movement and radical compassion, and there was something in me that responded to it when I first heard it. Where it came from was as mysterious as temperament, personality, or palate.
     
    I thought about these things as we rode back to the institution in silence, while also imagining Edward Stone in the seat next to me contemplating the end of his correctional career.
     
    “Your dad’s not a bad sheriff, is he?”
     
    I shook my head.
     
    “Think they’ll get to the bottom of this?”
     
    I shrugged. “FDLE is good,” I said, “but there’s just not a lot to go on. Coming up with a theory of what happened is one thing. Making a case is something else.”
     
    “Do you have a theory?” he asked.
     
    “I’ve got one forming,” I said, “but it’s very nebulous.”
     
    “Would you be willing to keep working on it for a little longer?” he asked. “Unofficially.”
     
    I nodded.
     
    “Thank you,” he said. “Obviously, I’d like to keep my job, but I also really want to know how it happened and who did it.”
     
    “There wasn’t a woman down here at all yesterday,” Patty Aaron said. “’Sides me.”
     
    “You’re sure?” I asked.
     
    “Positive,” she said. “Nowhere she could’ve been I didn’t check.”
     
    It was later in the day. I was back on the rec yard talking to one of the officers assigned there—a large white woman with long blond hair. Broad shoulders and flat-chested, she looked as if the attractive, if plain, head of a woman had been placed on the body of a man.
     
    The crime scene processed, FDLE was gone, only flapping yellow crime scene tape left behind. Lunch had been served, count cleared, the compound opened, but the rec yard remained closed.
     
    “Let me show you,” she said.
     
    We were standing beneath the pavilion on the backside of her office—the only structure on the rec yard. Stepping around the Ping-Pong table, she walked over to the chainlink fence-enclosed weight pile. I followed.
     
    “Every time the yard closes and the inmates leave, I do a walk through,” she said. “I start here with the weights.”
     
    The much maligned weight pile consisted of several benches, bars, and free weights. There was nowhere for anyone to hide.
     
    “After I close and lock the gate,” she said, “I walk over to the storage closet and check it.”
     
    She crossed the open area again, between the Ping-Pong tables, and over to the small closet from which all equipment was distributed. She opened the half door with the counter on top and walked inside, with me right behind her.
     
    The closet was narrow and held horseshoes, basketballs, bats, softballs, volleyballs, and the ping-pong